The document discusses the conventions used in the creation of a music video for a folk/rock track. It follows conventions of the genre such as a focus on natural imagery and locations. It uses a lone female protagonist, colour alterations, and split screen/montage editing to challenge conventions while appealing to the target audience. The representation of the female character as independent also challenges typical music video gender representations. Overall, the video aims to balance following genre conventions with some unconventional techniques.

1. EVALUATION QUESTION
ONE
SECTION ONE – MUSIC VIDEO
In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?

2. CONVENTIONS OF MUSIC
VIDEOS
We followed the conventions of the medium in having the visuals last as long as our chosen track.
Although for many folk videos, due to folk lyrics often representing a story or creating a strong
narrative, music videos tend to be longer, ours follows the convention of the music video medium to
ensure we could maintain an audience interest.
Music videos are either filmed performance, traditional visual narration or experimental visual narration
(Goodwin). Our music video would be considered an experimental visual narration because of our use of
split screen, our music video therefore is not performance based but based on the narrative of a young
woman journeying through various locations alone.
The target audience of our piece was females aged 16-24 and that held and interest in either folk music, the
genre of independent films or an interest in the progressive representation of females in the media. The
conventions our film followed aimed to maintain this audience and create a wide appeal.
TARGET AUDIENCE

3. ASPECTS OF MISE-EN-SCENE
Throughout our music video we aimed to keep the conventions of a British independent folk/rock music video.
Typically for music video that follows the folk genre there is a heavy focus on both urban and natural realism.
The folk genre tends to be seen as traditional, with a lack of manufactured sound and bands not heavily relying
on technology to create pieces. The music videos of the genre reflect this, natural imagery is often used with
reference to leading a 'simple life', e.g working in farming, and the minimal use of man-made surroundings
maintains this image.
Early folk music videos inspired by artists such as Bob Dylan or Nick Drake hold a focus on the artist, with
aspects of the natural world appearing throughout. Although I could not film the artist of our track, I decided
to study the music videos of the genre, making links between the natural imagery used in order to follow
conventions and highlight the genre. Nick Drake’s ‘Cello Song’ presents this naturalistic focus, we decided to
use the same location of Cambridge as this video, to present this folk convention and reflect the genre.
The locations we decided upon tended to reflect this; with our main location being Cromer, a small seaside town
which references the simplistic lifestyle of the fishing community, and heavy focus on the natural world. The
other locations, outdoor Cambridge and the small streets of Norwich again aimed to maintain this minimal
naturalistic aesthetic in order to follow the conventions of the genre and to appeal to an audience that follows
folk music.
Our video reflected a naturalistic lifestyle, with a focus on simplicity in nature and but also aspects of
Britishness.
As our artist is a British musician, we decided to present this throughout our video. Although some of our
locations are fairly ambiguous in terms of there geographical locations, such as the bookshop or the museum,
locations such as the seaside or outdoor Cambridge were referenced to present this. Location often represents
the artists locational inspiration, as it reflects the idea of living a simple life, almost reflecting moving
back to basics. For example, this is prominent in the music video for Rusted Root’s ‘Send Me On My Way’, the
video features aspects of Native American Culture reflecting that of some of the bands inspiration.

4. ASPECTS OF MISE-EN-SCENE
COLOUR/INTERTEXTUALITY
Our film also took a more unconventional approach to mise-en-scene in using colour alteration, as although it
follows the general convention of the focus on the natural world, we altered the colours of many of our shots
in order to create a slightly surrealist atmosphere. The genre that typically uses bright colour alterations
may be a more psychedelic rock type of music, such as the video for The Beatles ‘A Day in the Life' the use of
alteration reflects the surreal nature of this video and the lyrics of the track. Whilst the use of colour in
The Beatles’ video reflects the genre of the piece, ours reflects a movement away from the conventional
natural colour used in folk music videos and towards a slightly alternative genre that may appeal to our
audience demographic.
The use of colour alteration in our music video also reflected one of the
conventions of independent film, as our target audience may have an interest in
independent cinema, we decided to research some of the key aspects of these films
and found that the use of colour alteration in many was prominent. Director Wes
Anderson’s films often use colour alteration to present emotions of characters or
to purely create something aesthetically pleasing, films such as ‘Pierrott le Fou’
also use colour alteration in a similar way and all reflect the independent film
genre. With this in mind we decided to use both the editing software and the
colours we could find without the need for alteration in order to re-create this
style of work. The use of colours without alteration was used in order to follow
the conventions of both the independent film genre but also reflecting again the
focus on natural imagery so often presented in folk.
This was inspired mainly by
Mark Rothko’s minimalist
paintings, many of his works
featured two or three shades
of one colour creating
vibrant pieces reflecting an
abstract impressionism.

5. The lighting for our music video however was kept ambient throughout, whilst the psychedelic
rock/folk genre videos move away from the use of ambient lighting to a more artificial one, our
music video kept the generic conventions of folk in maintaining this natural source of light.
Folk music videos that follow this convention, such as Crosby, Stills and Nash’s ‘Southern
Cross’, tend to focus on the lighting throughout. Although our video keeps the ambient lighting,
we decided not to follow the convention of focusing on the light through lens flares, commonly
seen in folk music videos such as this one, as we felt the simplicity of folk could be presented
through the minimalism in our shots.
NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
The narrative structure of our film was based on the slightly unconventional character often used in
independent films of the solitary female, the video follows her finding new hobbies(reading/appreciating art)
and presents a quiet existence through this. This narrative both follows the conventions of independent
cinema, with films such as ‘Lost in Translation’ also reflecting this, and also the conventions of the folk
genre. The solitude in folk music is often presented in music videos of the genre maintaining the basic nature
of the music and reflecting the contentment with the world often presented in the lyrics.
The narrative also used split screen to highlight our characters time spent alone, the use of split screen in
folk is not uncommon, with one of the very first split screen films produced being the official film of
“Woodstock’ featuring all manner of music acts including the promotion of many folk artists.
Montage is a form of continuity editing used to evoke an emotional or intellectual response from the
audience, the use of this paired with our use of split screen editing may evoke an emotional response as
well as creating a visual appeal.

6. Although unconventional for many folk videos, due to the emphasis being purely upon the natural world, Strauss
suggests the use of “binary opposition” adds appeal, and the emphasis on the differences between our exterior
locations such as Cambridge alongside the external locations of the museum adds variety and untimely a visual
appeal.
The use of split screen in our video highlighted the narrative of our character as well as challenging the
convention of the conventional fixed frame in music videos. The use of montage alongside split screen adds
depth to the video, creating a narrative that gives the audience an awareness of time.
“Manovich has helped to trigger a more substantive examination of the expressive
possibilities of the form. He grounds his analysis in the tradition of Eisenstein's
"montage within the frame", and argues that the new digital technologies support a
"spatial montage", where multiple cinematic frames offer narrative paths where "montage
in time [editing] is no longer privileged over montage [in space]".
This is a relatively bold position for Manovich to take. The essence of the filmmaking art is the
plasticity and therefore the power inherent in cinema’s ability to present and juxtapose events that
is to say, shots in time.”
(http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit6/papers/Bizzocchi.pdf)
Split Screen: “The Fragmented Frame: The Poetics of the Split-Screen” by Jim Bizzocchi suggests that the use of
split screen adds audience awareness of time that cannot be seen through only using montage editing.
In the article, Willis notes that contemporary filmmakers such as Greenway and Figgis use “digital
capabilities to break the ‘tyranny of the frame’ and make expressive use of a multi-windowed cinematic
environment”, the use of breaking the conventions of the fixed frame allow for the audience to see many
pieces of one narrative in a short time, and, because our music video only lasted as long as the track,
this was important. The use of the split screen also allowed us to present the similarities in location our
character visited, the use of almost identical shots side by side gave coherence between locations and
presented the entirety of her day/journey.

7. The montage narrative of our music video was chosen to conform to the conventional narrative of folk/rock music
videos. Often folk music tells a story in itself, with the lyrics holding an emotional narrative without the
need for the music or a video. Montage is a from of continuity editing, allowing for the sequence to hold
audience appeal in creating a linear narrative to follow. The use of this with the split screen edit envokes an
intellectual response from the audience and creates visual appeal.
Because of the heavy focus needed on the lyrics, the use of a montage sequence is therefore often the choice for
folk musician's music videos, it serves to enhance the lyrics by keeping the visuals as minimal as possible and
the focus of the audience on the emotion behind them. We wanted to maintain this convention of not over-
complicating the visuals, in order to highlight the lyrics of the track and to successfully promote our artist.
The Crosby, Stills and Nash video previously mentioned is a prime example of this, the use of the minimal amount
of visuals allows for the audience to focus on the story within the lyrics and highlights the simplicity of
folk.
We used the convention of focusing on the story of one girl. The use of a solitary female performer can also be
seen in Ed Sheeran’s ‘The A Team’, Sheeran’s video features a young girl struggling to live, her tragic journey
is presented as she walks alone. Although our video has different reasoning for using a lone girl (Sheeran’s is
to highlight the young girls desperate position, whereas ours is to emphasise a happiness in solitude) the use
of one performer creates a strong narrative and maintains a focus on something fairly minimal, much like the use
of nature in conventional folk videos.
We also followed a linear narrative, the story follows the character as she travels alone through various
locations. This is conventional of a music video, in order to keep the narrative clear, although some music
videos, such as David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’, use backwards montage, we felt for the montage piece a continuous
linear narrative would suit the genre and the minimalism of the track best.
“Traditional folk music often includes sung words, although folk instrumental music occurs commonly
in dance music traditions. Narrative verse looms large in the traditional folk music of many
cultures. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_music#Subject_matter)

8. REPRESENTATION
Our music video features a lone female character, this representation is not often seen in music videos, for
instance the representation of females in most male artists videos is hyper-sexualised. A study conducted by the
University of Buffalo found that in the 2000s 17% of men in the music industry were sexualised compared to 83%
of women sexualised and 64% of them being hype-sexualised. Although this is uncommon within the folk genre, it
still reveals that our video defies statistical conventions of the representation of women in having a non-
sexualised female character defined by her own self.
This representation, as mentioned before, however can be found in independent films such as Amelie or Lost in
Translation. Both films feature a female protagonist creating their own paths similar to our video, through this
we have endeavored to appeal to our audience demographic- with our audience being female, we have followed the
convention of representing our target audience positively. Bulmer and Katz (1974) suggested that individuals
choose a text for the following purposes; diversion(an escape from reality), personal relationships and personal
identity. The idea of representing the personal identity of our target audience relates to this theory and
creates a wider audience appeal.
Although I am the creator of the text, and the audience are the decoders (Strauss)I feel the representation is
easily identifiable and difficult to misinterpret with reference to the independent films mentioned.
The use of the lone female character creates a minimal style to which the folk genre follows, often folk
music videos will feature the artists or a solitude within a character, either to represent the story
created in the lyrics or to visualise the minimalist style of the music.

9. GENRE AS AN INTERTEXTUAL
CONCEPT
Music videos can be performance based, concept based, or a mixture of the two. Our video is concept based,
focusing on the narrative of a lone girl’s journey through the use of a montage sequence.
Although the genre of our piece is slightly ambiguous, it has been suggested the bands sound is similar to
that of Nick Drake, suggesting a folk/rock genre to the music. The track is also very similar to the work
of 60s artist Donovan, and, although Donovan has a varying amount of music videos they tend to be
performance based due to the fact music videos had not really been used before. Goodwin and Katie Wales
suggest a link between lyrics and visuals is key in engaging an audience, the lyrics are not referenced
often in early music videos however the video for The Beatles ‘Penny Lane’ (1967) was one of the first
music videos to be released of this genre and presents aspects of the visuals. The montage clips of the
streets of Liverpool are recalled in the lyrics, whilst the band are presented throughout (following
conventions of early music videos) the use of montage clips to present the lyrics was a new concept.
Although the reference of lyrics is prominent throughout, the videos are more to do with the sound of the
tracks than the visuals, due to the music videos being very early makings and the lack of reference or
conventions to follow.